Marlar Is Fantastic At Duck River

WHEEL, Tenn. — Mike Marlar rolled around the topside, grabbed the lead away from Dane Dacus on lap 12 and never looked back en route to his third career Schaeffer’s Oil Southern Nationals Series victory Thursday night at Duck River Raceway Park, which was worth $3,500.

The Winfield, Tenn., driver drove around the high-side of the track and held on to become the sixth different winner this season while driving the Ronnie Delk-owned, Delk Equipment Company, R&S Trading and VP Racing Fuels-sponsored Cornett Racing Engines powered Rocket Chassis.

Dane Dacus and Tanner English led the field of 23 to fire for the start of the race with Dacus taking to the high-side lead early on.

By the seventh lap Marlar worked his way up from sixth to third spot and was the show on the topside of the track. By the 11th lap, Marlar had worked his way to second, again on the high-side and by the next lap, sailed by Dacus to take the point. Tanner English also went around Dacus for the runner-up spot and held on shuffling Dacus back two spots. Dacus would rebound and come home to finish third behind eventual winner Marlar and runner-up English.

Four cautions slowed the event. On lap ten, Jim Manka stopped at the top of turn four and on lap 14 Anthony Burroughs went around in turn two to bring out the second caution. On the next lap, front-straightaway contact between Eric Jacobsen and Bub McCool sent McCool into the wall with extensive damage sending him off the track via the wrecker. The final caution on lap 17 came as Austin Smith got crossways behind Josh Putnam, who also got crossed up coming off the fourth turn and it sent Billy Ogle into Smith with minor damage but Smith had brutal right-front damage that sent him off the track.

Marlar talked about his high-side hustling in the early stages of the event.

“It was a heck of a race right there, there was a lot of passing and sliding going on,” said Marlar.

“Everybody was racing really hard, I just kinda caught them guys guarding each other and got around them on the outside, but heck of a race, man they’ve just turned this race track into an awesome race track, you can start wherever and win the race and it’s just a good race track and a lot of local guys are really competitive here so it’s fun to see that and they got a good crowd every time we come and it’s fun coming here,” said Marlar.

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